Federal budget: little on offer for post-secondary education
[2008 03 05]The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) says the 2008 federal budget lacks any coherent vision for post-secondary education and research.
CAUT executive director Jim Turk says that aside from the creation of the Canada Student Grant Program, the budget ignores the most pressing needs of universities and colleges.
“The new grant program announced today is a step in the right direction, but by simply consolidating money from existing programs it means there’s no real new support for students in the current year.”
Turk emphasizes that the government is providing no new money for post-secondary education through the Canada Social Transfer, funding that would have allowed universities and colleges to make education more affordable and ensure that staff and students have access to necessary labs, library resources and other facilities.”
The budget announces the creation of a small program for 500 Canadian and international students.Named after Georges Vanier, the Canada Graduate Scholarships will provide up to $50,000 a year for no more than three years.
“While we welcome the new program, we can’t ignore the fact that there is otherwise no increase in funding for ’s hundreds of thousands of undergraduate students in this budget,” Turk says. “The budget fails to deal with the real problem: the need for more core funding.”
The budget proposes a modest increase in federal funding for the indirect costs of university research. There are also small increases for the federal granting agencies, but the new money is heavily targeted to priority areas set by the government.
“We appreciate the new research funding, but we’re extremely concerned that the federal government is increasingly targeting research funding rather than allowing the priorities to be established by the research community,” Turk says.
CAUT is the national voice of more than 57,000 academic and general staff in universities and colleges across the country.